[4][5] William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman co-wrote the screenplay, which adapts Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel.

The film stars Humphrey Bogart as private detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as Vivian Rutledge in a story that begins with blackmail and leads to multiple murders.

When that movie failed, reshoots were done in early 1946 meant to take advantage of the public's fascination with "Bogie and Bacall".

[6][7] Philip Marlowe, a private detective in Los Angeles, is summoned to the mansion of General Sternwood, who wants to resolve a series of personal debts his daughter Carmen owes to bookseller Arthur Geiger.

She suspects her father's true motive for hiring a detective is to find his protégé, Sean Regan, who had disappeared a month earlier.

Hearing a gunshot and a woman's scream, he breaks in to find Geiger's body and a drugged Carmen, as well as a hidden camera minus its film.

During the night Marlowe learns that Sternwood's driver, Owen Taylor, has been found dead in a limousine driven off the Lido Pier, having been struck on the back of the head.

Vivian comes to Marlowe's office the next morning with scandalous pictures of Carmen that she has received with a blackmail demand for the negatives.

Marlowe returns to Geiger's bookstore and follows a car to the apartment of Joe Brody, a gambler who has previously blackmailed Sternwood.

When Marlowe goes to meet him and be taken to her hiding place, he spots Lash Canino, a gunman hired by Mars, who is there to find Agnes.

[2] Jules Furthman and Hawks rewrote during production to help appease censorship from the Hays Office, which was vehement about excluding sexual themes.

[11] A cable was sent to Chandler, who told his friend Jamie Hamilton in a March 21, 1949 letter: "They sent me a wire ... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either".

[2] Filming was meant to be completed in late November, but was continually delayed due to Bogart's increased drinking.

[2] When Jack Warner heard that in spite of this the cast was getting along, he sent this ribbing memo:"Word has reached me that you are having fun on the set.

"[14]Although post-production ended in March 1945, The Big Sleep was delayed by Warner Bros. until they had turned out a backlog of war-related films.

Because the war was ending, the studio feared the public might lose interest in the films, while The Big Sleep's subject was timeless.

However, there are several indications of the film's wartime production, such as the female taxi driver who picks up Marlowe in one scene, with many traditionally male occupations being taken up by women following the draft.

Upon learning of this, numerous benefactors, such as American magazine publisher Hugh Hefner and Turner Classic Movies, raised the money to pay for its restoration.

[3] At the time of its 1946 release, Bosley Crowther said the film leaves the viewer "confused and dissatisfied", points out that Bacall is a "dangerous looking female" ..."who still hasn't learned to act" and notes: The Big Sleep is one of those pictures in which so many cryptic things occur amid so much involved and devious plotting that the mind becomes utterly confused.

What with two interlocking mysteries and a great many characters involved, the complex of blackmail and murder soon becomes a web of utter bafflement.

[17]Time film critic James Agee called the film "wakeful fare for folks who don't care what is going on, or why, so long as the talk is hard and the action harder" but insists that "the plot's crazily mystifying, nightmare blur is an asset, and only one of many"; it calls Bogart "by far the strongest" of its assets and says Hawks, "even on the chaste screen...manages to get down a good deal of the glamorous tawdriness of big-city low life, discreetly laced with hints of dope addiction, voyeurism and fornication" and characterizing Lauren Bacall's role as "an adolescent cougar".

Some consider the 1945 cut to be the better, partly due to the inclusion of a scene at the District Attorney's office where the facts of the case, thus far, are laid out.

The only reason to see the earlier version is to go behind the scenes, to learn how the tone and impact of a movie can be altered with just a few scenes... As for the 1946 version that we have been watching all of these years, it is one of the great films noir, a black-and-white symphony that exactly reproduces Chandler's ability, on the page, to find a tone of voice that keeps its distance, and yet is wry and humorous and cares.

[19]In a 1997 review, Eric Brace of The Washington Post wrote that the 1945 original had a "slightly slower pace than the one released a year later and a touch less zingy interplay between Bogart and Bacall, but it's still an unqualified masterpiece".

[23] Roger Ebert included the film in his list of "Great Movies" and wrote, Working from Chandler's original words and adding spins of their own, the writers (William Faulkner, Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett) wrote one of the most quotable of screenplays: it's unusual to find yourself laughing in a movie not because something is funny but because it's so wickedly clever.

Shadow detail is strong – important given that The Big Sleep is oneiric – and while the brightness seems uneven, it's not enough to be terribly distracting.

It "includes the 1945 cut of the film that was screened for overseas servicemen, running two minutes longer and containing scenes not used in the official release".